1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to broadband wireless access data networks, and more particularly to data routing functionality for such data networks.
2. Related Art
Wireless data networks have provided mobile connectivity for subscribers under fixed wireless and/or mobile wireless modes. Generally, fixed wireless access technology has evolved to provide “last mile” connectivity to households and/or businesses providing broadband data rates under IEEE §802.16d and IEEE §802.16e specifications. In regions without pre-existing physical cable or telephone networks, such technology may provide a viable alternative for broadband access.
For large-scale deployment, mesh networks require deployment of hundreds to thousands of mesh base transceiver stations, with each base transceiver station requiring backhaul wire and/or optic fiber cable access to Internet networks and/or backbones. As a result, large numbers of cables have been needed for the backhaul access, incurring large deployment costs in time, material, and labor. Further, such deployments incur data transmission delays associated with accessing the backhaul networks, undercutting the advantages that otherwise may have been realized by the bandwidth available by the mesh data network technology.
In general, a base transceiver station may provide backhaul data path access from and to mobile stations and subscriber stations to an access service network gateway (ASN-GW) but needs to minimize these adverse factors. Further, the air links between a base transceiver station and a mobile station is less than favorable for multimedia-rich data transmissions, where transmission latency and the bit error rates of such connections are less than optimal. Accordingly, a need exists for increased performance of traffic over the air link between mobile stations and WiMAX base transceiver station.